A British Muslim convert once suspected of being a member of the ISIS death squad dubbed The Beatles has pleaded guilty to terrorism charges.
Aine Leslie Davis, 39, was deported from Turkey last August after serving a seven-and-a-half year sentence for being a member of ISIS.
On his arrival at Luton Airport, he was detained by British counter-terrorism police and charged with three offences.
On Monday, he pleaded guilty at London's Old Bailey to possession of a firearm and two charges of funding terrorism between 2013 and 2014. He is due to be sentenced next month.
His legal team had attempted to get the charges against him dropped arguing that he could not be tried twice for the same offending.
The British authorities have been accused of “conniving” with Turkish officials in his deportation.
It follows a failed bid by the then-home secretary Priti Patel to arrange his onward extradition to the US where two other "ISIS Beatles" members, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, were tried.
In legal argument, his defence lawyer Mark Summers KC noted “the spectre” of suspicion around Davis’s involvement with the Beatles cell from 2014 onwards.
It caused Davis to complain about mistreatment in his Turkish jail after he was interviewed about it by British intelligence officers, the court was told.
Mr Summers said that in July last year, lawyers in the ISIS Beatles case in Virginia clarified they were not seeking to bring a prosecution against Davis “because the evidence was there were only three members and not four members of that cell”.
The barrister claimed Ms Patel veered into “Alice in Wonderland territory” when she phoned authorities in the US begging them to take Davis’s case.
“The irregular personal involvement of the Home Secretary trying to persuade a foreign country to prosecute a UK national is frankly extraordinary,” he said.
Detectives discovered Davis' offending through communications he had with his partner Amal El Wahabi – who was later found guilty of funding terrorism – while he was in Syria in 2013.
Officers discovered terrorist propaganda at her home which is said to have been left behind by Davis when he went to Syria.
On her mobile phone was a picture sent by Davis in November 2013 in Syrian woods with a man holding a Kalashnikov rifle and a message telling her not to show it to anybody.
He sent another picture posing with 13 others in military-style clothes, all with guns held aloft.
The court heard it was clear that Davis – who had convictions for possession of drugs and gun possession – had gone to Syria to fight for ISIS and that he was preoccupied with martyrdom.
In November 2015, Davis was arrested with others in Istanbul after being found using a forged travel document and later jailed for ISIS membership.
He has always denied being connected with The Beatles cell – so-called because of their British accents – who tortured and beheaded western hostages in Syria.
